Metamorphosen

Author's Text
Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC - 18 AD) came from a knightly family. He abandoned a political career in favor of poetry but was exiled to the Black Sea by Augustus in 8 AD due to the morally questionable influence of his works. Until then spoiled by fortune, Ovid never recovered from this fall and died embittered in exile.

Blurb
"The Metamorphoses was also the thrilling repository of mythology. Who was Phaeton? Lycaon? Procne? Arachne? For a thousand such questions, Ovid was the Who's Who. One had to be familiar with it; otherwise, one could not understand the Latin poets. Moreover, all mythological stories had an allegorical meaning. Thus, Ovid was also a treasure trove of morality." No one can appreciate the significance of Ovid's great epic better than Ernst Robert Curtius, which, like no other Latin work, has nourished the literature, art, and even music of the following two millennia.